Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman has said that the landfall of Cyclone Biparjoy on the Pakistani coastal belt has been delayed as it has slowed down and is now expected to hit Keti Bandar at midnight today, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
Briefing the media persons in Islamabad on Thursday about the latest situation of the cyclone, Sherry Rehman said evacuation process in the affected areas of coastal belt has been completed and some 82,000 people have been shifted to safer places.
The minister said the cyclone has now recurved towards north-east and it is encouraging sign that it has changed its direction from Karachi. She said 17 stations are continuously monitoring the situation.
Howling gales and crashing waves pounded the coastline as Cyclone Biparjoy entered the Pakistan territorial waters on Thursday and only hours away before making a landfall at Keti Bandar.
Nearly 150,000 people have fled the predicted path of Cyclone Biparjoy, whose name means "disaster" in Bengali, with meteorologists warning it could devastate homes and tear down power lines when it lands late Thursday.
Powerful winds and storm surges were forecast to hammer a 325-kilometre (200-mile) stretch of coast between Mandvi in India's Gujarat state and Karachi in Pakistan.
At sea, winds were gusting at up to 180 kilometres per hour (112 miles per hour), with speeds predicted to reach 115-125 kph and gusts of up to 140 kph by the time it makes landfall.
Keti Bandar embankment breached
The effects of cyclone Biparjoy have started appearing on the coast of Sindh and Balochistan Thursday.
According to the latest forecast the cyclone will hit Keti Bandar and Thatta later in the day. There is a sea storm, and the waves have also surged. It has also rained with gusty winds in Keti Bandar, Sajawal and Tharpakar.
Half of the sea embankment in Keti Bandar has been breached. The city is threatened to be flooded.
Moreover, strong dusty winds have been blowing in Mirpurkhas and Umerkot.
In its update on Thursday morning, Pakistan Met Office said cyclone Biparjoy is over northeast Arabia Sea has now moved north-northeastward during the last six hours and now lies near latitude 22.4°N and longitude 66.8°E at a distance of about 275kms south of Karachi, 285kms south of Thatta and 155kms south-southwest of Keti Bandar.
The curving cyclone is at 200 kms away from the Pakistani coast and it will barrel into Pakistani territory around noon today and will make landfall at Keti Bandar.
Urban flooding feared in Karachi
Cyclone Biparjoy has entered into Pakistan’s territorial waters and is roaring on its path to impact Keti Bandar later today.
The sea waves are expected to surge by 30 feet with wind speed of 160 km per hour. The soaring waves have already causing flooding in coastal areas of Chashma Goth, Ilyas Goth, Mubarak village, Turtle Beach and Hawks Bay.
Walls of the several huts collapsed after powerful sea waves hit them, raising fears of urban flooding in Karachi as the megacity is expected to receive heavy thundershowers.
Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said 82,000 people had been moved from southeastern coastal areas and housed in 75 relief camps. "It is a cyclone the likes of which Pakistan has never experienced," she told reporters.
Many of the areas affected are the same inundated in last year's catastrophic monsoon floods, which put a third of Pakistan under water, damaging two million homes and killing more than 1,700 people.
"These are all results of climate change," she said.
Storm surges were expected to reach 3.5 metres (11.5 feet), with flooding possible in the megacity of Karachi, home to about 20 million people.
"Our concern is when the cyclone is over, how will we feed our children?" said 80-year-old Wilayat Bibi, in a relief camp in the city of Badin.
"If our boats are gone. If our huts are also gone. We will be languishing with no resources."
- India ‘terrified' -
India's meteorologists warned of the potential for "widespread damage", including the destruction of crops, "bending or uprooting of power and communication poles" and disruption of railways and roads.
The Gujarat state government said 75,000 people had relocated from coastal and low-lying areas to shelter.
Jayantha Bhai, a 35-year-old shopkeeper in India's beach town of Mandvi, told AFP soon after dawn on Thursday that he was afraid for his family's safety.
"This is the first time I've experienced a cyclone," Bhai said, a father of three boys aged between eight and 15, who planned to wait out the cyclone in his small concrete home behind the shop.
"This is nature, we can't fight with it," he said as driving rain lashed his home.
India's Meteorological Department predicted the "very severe" storm would hit near the Indian port of Jakhau on Thursday evening, warning of "total destruction" of traditional mud and straw thatched homes.
Late on Wednesday, a short distance from India's Jakhau port, about 200 people from the Kutch district huddled together in a single-storey health centre.
Many were worried about their farm animals, which they had left behind.
Dhal Jetheeben Ladhaji, 40, a pharmacist at the health centre, said 10 men had stayed behind to look after hundreds of cattle crucial to their village's livelihood.
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"We are terrified, we don't know what will happen next," Ladhaji said.
"We are praying to God that the cyclone does not come, and that these people who are staying in the shelter can go back to their homes with smiles on their faces."
Cyclones -- the equivalent of hurricanes in the North Atlantic or typhoons in the Northwest Pacific -- are a regular and deadly menace on the coast of the northern Indian Ocean, where tens of millions of people live.
Scientists have warned that storms are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer with climate change.
Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate researcher at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said cyclones derive their energy from warm waters, and that surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea were 1.2 to 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than four decades ago.
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Reporters Rabail Ashraf, Shazaib Hussain, Javed Iqbal and GR Junejo
With inputs from Agencies